Under Siege! (23 page)

Both before and after the war, the South’s economy was based on agriculture. After the war ended, large landowners could not afford to hire all the workers they needed to replace their former slaves, and those former slaves and returning small farmers could not afford to buy land. This led to the system known as sharecropping, where poor farmers “leased” land from plantation owners in return for a share of their crops. This worked well for landowners, but because of unfair business practices, many sharecroppers became the poorest of the poor. Freed blacks likened sharecropping to slavery, for even though they could not be whipped or sold, they were enslaved by debt. Many sharecroppers, both black and white, lived on their “leased” land for generations, remaining poor and uneducated.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery in 1865. This and other new laws were meant to ensure that blacks became
full citizens. They could now go to school, and black males could vote. Some whites blamed blacks for the poverty and violence that plagued Southern society. Whites who supported black advancement found themselves in conflict with whites who refused to accept blacks as equals.

Some Southern states passed what became known as the Black Laws in the early years after the war, followed two decades later by the Jim Crow Laws, all of which were meant to make blacks second-class citizens without the right to vote. A policy of “separate but equal” was used to institute widespread segregation in education and in society. Segregation did indeed separate the races, but it did not make things equal. Blacks had to use their own drinking fountains, rest rooms, and swimming pools. They were told to sit at the back of public buses and in special cars on trains, and they were denied service in many restaurants and hotels. Segregation was also widespread in some Northern states.

Terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan sprang up to keep both blacks and whites too frightened to challenge segregation laws and racial codes. Blacks who asserted their rights risked being the targets of violence. While there were pockets of progress—Vicksburg briefly had a black mayor and a black sheriff, and the state of Mississippi sent the first black senator to the United States Senate—these advancements did not last.

Not until the civil rights movement of the 1960s did the nation finally begin to successfully reverse racism. Today, full racial justice is still not a reality in America.

FOR MORE ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR

The Boys’ War
by Jim Murphy (New York: Clarion Books, 1990) gives voice to the experiences of the as many as 400,000 youths sixteen and younger who may have served in the Civil War.
Civil War A-Z
by Norman Bolotin (New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 2002) presents an overview of the war and its most important places, events, and people.
Fields of Fury: The American Civil War
by James M. McPherson (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2002) is a well-written history of the war, rich with illustration.
Life Goes On: The Civil War at Home 1861-1865
by James R. Arnold and Roberta Wiener (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2002) considers how the war affected everyone, with emphasis on the burden placed on women. In
Life in the South During the Civil War
(San Diego, California: Lucent Books, 1997), James P. Reger considers the day-to-day lives of everyone from slaves to middle-class farmers to wealthy planters.
Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War: 1831-1861
by Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier (New York: Benchmark Books, 2000) offers a look inside the institution of slavery and what it was like for the people who lived it.

The Civil War,
from Ken Burns, is an ambitious eleven-hour undertaking, rich with the voices of those who were there, illustrated with black-and-white photographs, and accompanied by period music.

www.nps.gov/vick
is part of the website for the National Parks Service and offers information about the Vicksburg Military Park and the history of the siege.

www.vicksburgcvb.org
shows glimpses of the city and some of its historic buildings.

www.oldcourthouse.org
features Civil War-era photographs of Vicksburg.

www.AmericanCivilWar.com
is a useful website offering extensive information about the history of the Civil War, including maps and photographs.

www.historyplace.com
offers an overview of the war and information about specific battles.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Both Willie Lord and Lucy McRae wrote of their childhood experiences for
Harper’s Magazine,
Willie in December 1908 and Lucy in June 1912. Their articles were reprinted in
Yankee Bullets, Rebel Rations
by Gordon A. Cotton (Vicksburg, Mississippi: The Print Shop, 2003). Frederick Grant was interviewed by or wrote several times for publications about his experiences at Vicksburg. This material is part of the archives of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois.

Arnold, James R.
Grant Wins the War: Decision at Vicksburg.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.

Balfour, Emma.
Vicksburg: A City Under Siege; The Diary of Emma Balfour.
Compiled by Phillip C. Weinberger, 1983 (no additional publication information).

Confederate Women.
Edited by Mauriel Phillips Joslyn. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 1996.

Cotton, Gordon A.
Vicksburg: Southern Stories of the Siege.
Vicksburg, Mississippi: The Print Shop, 1988.

——.
Yankee Bullets, Rebel Rations.
Vicksburg, Mississippi: The Print Shop, 2003.

——, and Ralph C. Mason.
With Malice Toward Some: The Military Occupation of Vicksburg, 1864-1895.
Vicksburg, Mississippi: Vicksburg and Warren County Historical Society, 1991.

Flood, Charles Bracelen.
Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.

Foote, Shelby.
The Beleaguered City: The Vicksburg Campaign.
New York: The
Modern Library, 1995.

Graham, Martin F., Richard A. Saurs, and George Skoch.
The Blue and the Gray: The Conflict Between North and South.
Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications International Ltd., 1997.

Grant, Frederick Dent. “General Frederick Dent Grant: Recollections of His Famous Father.” 1908 interview by James B. Morrow. Reprinted in the
Ulysses S. Grant Association Newsletter
(Southern Illinois University, Carbondale) 9, no. 2 (January 1972).

——. “An Interview With Colonel Frederick D. Grant About His Father.” Interview by A. E. Watrous. Originally printed in
McClure’s Magazine,
May 1984. Reprinted in the
Ulysses S. Grant Association Newsletter
(Southern Illinois University, Carbondale) 7, no. 4 (July 1970).

——. “Reminiscences of General Frederick Dent Grant.” Compiled and printed in the
Ulysses S. Grant Association Newsletter
(Southern Illinois University, Carbondale) 6, no. 3 (April 1969).

——. “With Grant at Vicksburg.” Originally printed in
The Outlook,
July 2, 1898, and reprinted in the
Ulysses S. Grant Association Newsletter
(Southern Illinois University, Carbondale) 7, no. 1 (October 1969).

Grant, Julia.
The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant.
Edited by John Y. Simon. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975.

Grant, U. S.
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant.
New York: Da Capo Press, 1982.

Hankinson, Alan.
Vicksburg 1863: Grant Clears the Mississippi.
Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing, 2002.

Hoehling, A. A.
Vicksburg: 47 Days of Siege.
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1969.

Kennett, Lee.
Sherman: A Soldier’s Life.
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.

Korn, Jerry.
War on the Mississippi: Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign.
Chicago: Time-Life Books, 1985.

Lord, Mrs. W. W.
Journal Kept by Mrs. W. W. Lord During the Siege of Vicksburg by the Forces of General U. S. Grant, May and July, 1863.
Springfield, Massachusetts: Connecticut Valley Historical Society, no date. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

Loughborough, Mary.
My Cave Life in Vicksburg.
New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1864.

Marten, James.
The Children’s Civil War.
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Schultz, Duane.
The Most Glorious Fourth: Vicksburg and Gettysburg, July 4, 1863.
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.

Sherman, W. T.
Sherman: Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957.

Twain, Mark.
Cave Life During the Siege of Vicksburg.
Pamphlet, Vicksburg Military Park.

Waldrep, Christopher.
Vicksburg’s Long Shadow: The Civil War Legacy of Race and Remembrance.
Lanham, Maryland: Littlefield Publishers, 2005.

Werner, Emmy E.
Reluctant Witnesses: Children’s Voices from the Civil War.
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998.

Wheeler, Richard.
The Siege of Vicksburg.
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.

Winschel, Terrence J.
Vicksburg: Fall of the Confederate Gibraltar.
Abilene, Texas: McWhiney Foundation Press, 1999.